Friday, 4 February 2011

More cycle parking at Meppel railway station

Travellers using the Meppel railway station now have a completely new cycle park. There are more than 1100 spaces in the watched cycle park and on the roof of the building another 650 can be parked.

Next to the building are another 800 spaces. The new manned cycle park also offers repair services, sales and cycle hire. Part of the station also forms a site for OV-Fiets bike share bikes.

This cycle park was built between April 2010 and November 2010. It's another example of expansion is a part of the national "ruimte voor de fiets" ("room for the bike") plan which has so far built 157000 unwatched parking spaces, 30000 watched spaces and 13000 cycle lockers in 350 cycle parks.

Previously I had a post about the golden cycle stand, which was the 200000th erected as part of this plan.

Meppel is a small city of just 31000 people. The cycle park now has spaces for 2550 bicycles, which is enough for one in 12 of the population to park a bicycle at the rail station. You can work out a comparable ratio for your own town. Regular increases of cycle parking numbers at railway stations in the Netherlands is a given. It's going on all the time.

To make a comparison, it's easy to divide the population of your own town or city with the number of cycle parking spaces you have available, either at the railway station or at other destinations. You can see how other Dutch railway stations compare.

Just amazing. After reading this, I looked at Heppel on Google Maps Street View. If you travel north a bit and follow the railway line from Groningen to Delfzijl, it passes through what look like a few very small villages. Each one has a small railway station with more bike parking than I have ever seen at an English or Australian station. Brilliant.

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